Police Chief to Parents: Hack Your Kids’ Facebook Accounts

Below:

Next story in Security

Rather than wondering which websites your kids are checking out,
or whom they’re meeting and talking to on Facebook, why not just
hack into their computers and find out for yourself?

James Batelli, the police chief of Mahwah, N.J., and his
detectives conduct seminars during which they teach parents how
to outfit a computer with keystroke logging software, which
inconspicuously captures and stores every action performed on
that machine.

Batelli explained that kids put themselves in potentially
dangerous situations online every day, especially on Facebook,
where they run the risk of coming into contact with child
predators who troll the social networking site.

“Read the paper any day of the week and you’ll see an abduction
[or] a sexual assault that’s the result of an Internet
interaction or a Facebook comment,” Batelli told
NBC New York.

Using keystroke logging software, parents can obtain their
children's
passwords, giving them access to the full spectrum of the
kids' online activities.

“When it comes down to safety and welfare of your child, I don’t
think any parent would sacrifice anything to make sure nothing
happens to their children,” said Batelli, the father of a teenage
daughter. “If it means buying an $80 package of software and
putting it on and seeing some inappropriate words you don’t want
your child to say. Then that’s part of society.”

Edi Goodman, chief privacy officer for Identity Theft 911,
expressed mixed feelings about this high-tech parenting method.
He called it an updated version of rifling through kids’ drawers
and closets.

“It’s a slippery slope to spy on your kids,” said Goodman, who
has two young children. “Hopefully I can teach my kids the skill
sets to be aware about these
[online] dangers, because I can’t be with them all the time.”

Goodman told SecurityNewsDaily he isn’t completely opposed to
Batelli’s spying idea but thinks it should be applied on a
case-by-case basis. Although he doesn’t see himself doing it, he
said he could understand what might drive other parents to track
what their children are doing on the Web.